The arrival of the two armies’ battle troops instantly lightened the burden on Beishan Pass, and the fresh supplies they brought allowed the Ning forces to at last destroy the remaining two siege ramps.

Standing on the wall and watching as those two ramps were set ablaze and came crashing down, Li Chi finally managed to release a long, slow breath.

Perhaps the Black Martial forces would build new siege ramps — perhaps on the next overcast night they would come pushing new ones forward.

But this time, having lost one hundred thousand soldiers and watched six siege ramps be burned down, they still stood outside Beishan Pass.

Every inch of ground within the pass — the enemy’s feet would not set down upon it at will.

After all the ramps had been destroyed, the Black Martial forces seemed to lose some of their resolve to press the assault. As those two remaining ramps collapsed in roaring flame, the Black Martial army retreated like a receding tide.

For the next three days, the Black Martial forces mounted no new attacks.

Perhaps they were looking for new approaches. Perhaps they were constructing another set of ramps. Perhaps their fighting edge had been blunted and they needed time to recover.

Over three and a half months, the Black Martial forces’ overwhelming arrogance had been ground away to almost nothing.

Down on the drill ground.

Gao Xining stood there as if deep in thought, motionless for quite some time, those beautiful brows rising slightly now and then — the look of someone on the verge of an insight.

After perhaps a quarter-hour, Gao Xining bent down and retrieved a stone from the bamboo basket she had prepared, then threw it forward. The stone traced a clean arc through the air and landed on the ground.

Then Gao Xining took another stone, shifted her stance, and threw it — landing slightly shorter than the first.

She stood there thinking again.

These past days, watching Li Chi lead the Ning army soldiers in resisting the Black Martial army, watching the Black Martial forces’ enormous siege tower vehicles, their even more enormous siege ramps, their forces outnumbering the Ning army several dozen times over…

Gao Xining kept feeling that she had thought of something — but the feeling was hazy, right before her eyes yet unable to be seized.

She had spent these few days since the Black Martial attack paused going back over her thoughts on the battlefield.

After Li Chi had arranged the military affairs and returned to their quarters, he didn’t find Gao Xining there. He asked the personal guards and learned she had come to the drill ground, so he made his way over.

He had actually arrived a while ago and had been watching Gao Xining throw stones the whole time. It was clear she was not practicing — she was searching. Searching for a more effective angle.

And what that effectiveness was optimized for was obviously not for throwing by a person.

As Li Chi watched, he suddenly understood what Gao Xining was thinking.

“Are you trying to design something that can strike an enemy from even greater range than a heavy crossbow? Something that could hurl projectiles through the air on an arcing trajectory?”

He said this as he walked toward her.

Gao Xining turned, saw Li Chi, and smiled — because he had guessed her idea. Because only Li Chi could guess her ideas.

In another person’s eyes, she probably just looked like someone practicing stone throwing.

“If…”

Gao Xining said to Li Chi: “We could build something like a human arm — a much larger arm — that could throw much larger stones… then we could destroy the enemy’s siege ramps and tower vehicles before they ever reached the walls.”

The light in Li Chi’s mind had already come on. It had flickered to life the moment he first understood what Gao Xining was thinking.

Without question, Changmei the Daoist was one of the finest craftsmen in the world. His ability to build something as astonishing as the Flowing Cloud Formation array was proof enough.

And as Changmei’s finest — and only — disciple, Li Chi had absorbed more than enough from his master.

“Something like a human arm — a much larger arm…”

Li Chi murmured to himself, eyes narrowing slightly.

In that moment, a rush of ideas flooded his mind — so many at once that they were tangled and confused.

This world was vast — far larger than anyone imagined. The Black Martial people, for instance, believed the world was at least half Black Martial empire and the remaining smaller half was everything else, including the central plains. And the central plains people’s understanding of the world extended only to the Western Regions, the Black Martial lands, the Eastern Sea, and the southern frontier — the boundaries of their opened horizons.

Neither Black Martial nor central plains peoples could see that far, far away existed an empire called Anxi. And that empire had already built catapults — and was using this weapon to take cities and expand its territory, becoming one of the great powers of that land.

And in truth, what Gao Xining was imagining was exactly a catapult — only without the knowledge of anyone who had come before, her idea existed only as a vague outline.

Li Chi crouched down and began drawing diagrams in the dirt with a stick. Gao Xining crouched beside him to watch, filling in details from time to time.

The two of them sketched and wrote like this on the drill ground, and before they knew it, the whole morning had quietly passed.

In the distance, Yu Jiuling sat on the low wall at the edge of the drill ground, legs swinging, watching Li Chi and Gao Xining with a goofy grin.

Dantai Yajing came back from a patrol with his men and happened to see Yu Jiuling sitting there smiling like an idiot. He went over.

He sat down beside Yu Jiuling and asked: “What are you grinning about?”

Yu Jiuling said: “Look — the chief and my big sister, grown people, and they’ve been crouching down drawing lines in the dirt like kids for half a day.”

Dantai Yajing looked, then curled his lip: “You’re really talking nonsense. Do you think the chief and Gao Xining are the kind of people who would spend half a day crouching in the dirt drawing for fun?”

He paused a moment, then said with great conviction: “I think the chief and Gao Xining are playing a game to see who can hit the outhouse with a stone.”

Yu Jiuling: “Ugh!”

He stared wide-eyed at Dantai Yajing: “How can you say that — the moment you say it, I feel like you’re right.”

Dantai Yajing burst out laughing: “Of course. I’m very perceptive.”

Yu Jiuling asked: “Then what do you think they mean when they keep drawing and then lifting their hands like they’re throwing something?”

Dantai Yajing thought about it, then imitated Gao Xining’s voice and manner: “Diudiu, I think this throw is the one that gets the stone into the outhouse.”

Then he switched to Li Chi’s voice: “Nonsense. This angle is better. This one’s guaranteed to splash the person squatting inside.”

Then back to Gao Xining: “I don’t believe it. We need someone to test it.”

Then Li Chi again: “Fine! In that case we’ll tie up Jiuling and have him squat in the outhouse.”

Yu Jiuling: “…”

He sighed and said to Dantai Yajing: “Do you think you can still recall what kind of person you were before you met us? Look at yourself now — nothing but filth coming out of your mouth…”

Dantai Yajing huffed: “I talk filth — isn’t that entirely because you lot kept spraying it at me?”

Yu Jiuling: “Did I point my backside at you?”

Dantai Yajing grabbed Yu Jiuling and sat down on top of him.

Yu Jiuling, pinned flat: “Can’t argue so you resort to violence. You… have absolutely no sense of martial virtue.”

Dantai Yajing laughed heartily and stood up, letting Yu Jiuling scramble upright, then said with a grin: “You can’t beat me, so you say I have no martial virtue. I can’t out-argue you — does that mean you have no mouth virtue? Speaking of which — what did you think of me the first time you saw me?”

Yu Jiuling said: “Don’t overthink it. I’m not the type to assume bad things about people. I couldn’t possibly have thought you were some villain or some wandering troublemaker. First time I laid eyes on you, my only impression was… this guy… is acting like he’s not even human.”

Dantai Yajing grabbed Yu Jiuling and shoved him back under his backside again.

Over on the drill ground, Li Chi looked over all the diagrams he had drawn, then said with a smile: “I’ll go back and refine this on paper. Then I’ll find some wood and build a small model first. If it works, we’ll build the real thing.”

Gao Xining let out a delighted laugh: “Brilliant!”

Li Chi said: “What’s brilliant?”

Gao Xining said: “Your shamelessness. Brilliantly shameless.”

Li Chi: “…”

Then they chatted as they walked back, and saw Dantai Yajing sitting on Yu Jiuling, having pressed him all the way to the ground.

Gao Xining laughed and said: “What are those two doing?”

Li Chi said: “A hen sitting on her nest… cluck cluck cluck cluck… she laid a Jiuling-egg.”

Gao Xining burst out laughing.

Back inside, Li Chi put down everything he had been thinking about and sketched it out on paper, then found wood and set to work himself.

Building a small working model was no less demanding than building a full-size catapult.

Every component had to be made small yet precise, with not a single part that the real version would have left out.

With that kind of purely handcrafted work, the time required would be considerable. This was no task of a day or two.

Fortunately, the Black Martial forces appeared to be regrouping and had no immediate plans to resume their assault. Xiahou Zuo and the others speculated that the Black Martial forces were probably constructing new siege equipment of the ramp variety.

But Li Chi and his people were not greatly worried, because the time remaining for the Black Martial forces to press their assault was no longer so generous.

It was now the height of summer. If the Black Martial forces built too few ramps, the effort would be inadequate. And if they spent three months building six more siege ramps as they had done before, that would bring them to late autumn.

Late autumn in the northern frontier was nothing like the clear crisp autumn air of Jizhou — by that point the snow would already be falling and the cold coming fast.

An October at Beishan Pass could be described as the kind of cold that freezes water in an instant. If the Black Martial forces pushed new ramps up, the Ning army would need only to continuously pour water over them — climbing up such ice-covered ramps would be no small task for the Black Martial soldiers.

This period of calm was, for both sides, a rare window for recovery and resupply. The Black Martial forces reorganized their equipment. The Ning army drew breath.

Ten days passed without anyone quite noticing, and still nothing changed on the Black Martial side — no one knew what they were planning.

And at this time, in Youzhou Province.

Fengzhou, as a major city within Youzhou’s administrative territory, held a position of great importance — not only because of its military significance, but because the Cao family had built all their military manufacturing workshops there.

The craftsmen there worked with high efficiency, well versed in the processes and techniques for producing all manner of weapons, armor, and military equipment.

They were now producing weapons and armor for the Ning army, with a steady flow being transported to the battlefront for Tang Pidi. Anything not immediately needed was stored in the armory.

Perhaps owing to Li Chi’s nature, he had a habit of preparing things in abundance, and his people had adopted that same habit in everything they did.

The armory in Fengzhou currently held leather armor and military uniforms alone amounting to no fewer than one hundred fifty thousand sets — all of which was owed, of course, to the Cao family.

In the administrative office of Fengzhou, young Prefect Xu Ji was reading through official documents with an unpleasant expression.

Word had just arrived: Gan Daode, a powerful bandit leader from Qingzhou, together with various other rebel forces from the region — numbering no fewer than three hundred thousand in combined strength — had exploited the pressures of the northern frontier campaign and invaded Jizhou’s territory.

Sitting before him was a handsome young scholar with an air of refined elegance — a fellow townsman of Xu Ji’s, who had been traveling the world and, knowing Xu Ji was in Fengzhou, had stopped to pay him a visit.

In times like these, anyone who could travel the world freely was anything but ordinary.

Seeing Xu Ji’s unpleasant expression, the handsome young scholar asked: “What serious matter has come up?”

Xu Ji raised his head, then let out a long sigh: “Three hundred thousand rebel forces from Qingzhou have invaded Jizhou. Our King is in the northern frontier. I have already dispatched riders to send urgent word to the great general — but the great general is currently at a standoff with Yang Xuanji and most likely cannot break free either…”

He heaved another sigh: “At this moment, I cannot think of any solution.”

The young scholar thought for a moment, then asked: “What is the most powerful thing in your hands right now? Start there.”

Xu Ji said: “What could possibly be in my hands — the most I have is weapons and armor, but without soldiers, what use are those?”

The young scholar’s eyes lit up: “They’re useful!”